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AMY SMITH LINTON

Odd phobias

4/7/2020

11 Comments

 
Everyone knows someone who is irrationally (well, that's all in the perspective, right?) afraid of, say, legless reptiles or eight-legged wall-walkers.

​Not just slightly averse to these creatures, but seriously, panicky, clawing-a-way-out-the-window fearful.  

Each of my parents had one. For my father and his siblings, having survived a canoeing accident as children where they and their mother clung to an overturned boat while long strands of seaweed brushed their legs, the fear was snakes.
Daddo would refer to them as "serpents" because even the word "snakes" was dreadful to him.

While enjoying a spaghetti dinner at our house, a neighborhood kid joshed offhandedly about how it was like red snakes slithering up into our collective mouths. My father dropped his fork in disgust and stalked to the other room.

Toward the end of his life, he'd say that if we really wanted to be rid of him, just toss a plastic serpent into his lap. He promised it would be quick.
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Daddo was not kidding. Probably.
I never noticed Mumsie's issue until that first summer at the cottage. We'd gone to take a quick look at what they had purchased –– waterfront! as is! Bill Bailey blue! furnished with toys and musty furniture! –– on the shore of Lake Ontario. We ended up just staying all summer. Daddo went off to work downstate during the week while the three of us swam and read books and played with the neighbors (each according to her tastes. Mumsie was not much for running around pretending to be horses).

Naturally, given the body of fresh water, the long Northern summer days, and the untenanted nature of the cottage, there were spiders.  But it was a summer cottage. When sweeping, you directed the little pile of debris down that knot-hole in the floor in the hallway. On Thursdays, before Daddo came up, we'd eat ice-cream for supper. It was a Platonic ideal of summer cottage life.

Except for the spiders. One morning, we all scooted out of the house while Mumsie sprayed some sort of aerosolized poison. We must have been gone all day. Or maybe it was stormy when we returned, because while my sister and I, diminutive then, walked into the shadowy cottage without incident, our mother entered to a suspended carpet of deceased arachnids. All hanging at about eye-height from the ceiling. The horror. The horror.
In college, I pestered Mumsie for an explanation.

She had a scientific mind, fearless and nature-loving. 


She rehabilitated birds of prey, talked unhesitatingly about the facts of life, and if you stepped on broken glass and were pretty sure you needed stitches? All the kids knew to skip their own parents and go straight to her. She'd say, mildly, "Oh, don't bleed on the linoleum," and patch you up.  

Grinding over long-term depression and agoraphobia, she held down a job to support herself and her youngest child. She solo-camped as a newly divorced woman in her late 30's. 

​But spiders freaked her the hell out.
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Eventually, she dredged up a memory for me. "It might be this," she said, draping her paperback over her knee. "When I was very little –– on the farm in Springville –– I was playing in the creek."  [The word "creek" in the geography of rural northern Pennsylvania was pronounced "crick." A thing I miss from her.]

She turned her head in the same questing way as when she was trying to recall the details of a dream. "I was splashing the water with a stick and there was an enormous water-spider. I hit it and it burst open and dozens –– hundreds?–– of baby spiders spilled out."


Gulp. Okay then. 

My sister shares the distaste for spiders. We've often agreed that should there be an unfortunate single-car accident in her life, it's a near certainty to have involved a spider emerging from under the dashboard and landing on exposed skin.
I'm not fearful of snakes –– Not wanting to be afraid ever, I seized the opportunity in high school of grabbing up a handful of cold, writhing serpents as they emerged from their winter hibernation.

​I carried the ball of them around at arms length, thinking if I could do this, I was snake-proof for life. Mumsie, gardening a few yards away, said, "Yes, well, put them down before they start biting you."
Picture
It's plastic, okay?
​As for spiders?  I understand they won't actually kill me, but I find it hard to casually look away once I've noticed one nearby. I find their globular bodies shudderingly distasteful.

Be that all as it may. I actually meant to write about weird phobias. There's no shortage of oddity in the world.  And phobias are the most common of mental illnesses.

Mental illness. Huh. ​

​I've felt claustrophobia. Couldn't get into an elevator for two years.  It was a side-effect, I think, of a dreadful boyfriend and asthma.

Once I nearly fainted –– and me a farm kid! –– at the vision of a big splinter protruding from someone else's finger. All the blood and guts in the world, and I was about to keel over from a splinter. I couldn't even help her yank it out. 

But that's pretty mundane stuff. What's more intriguing is the fringier fears.
For instance, I have one friend who cannot bear, to the point of vomit, not just the texture of the cotton plugs found in aspirin bottles -- but even a discussion of the dusty, squeaky cotton found in aspirin bottles. A full-grown man with his fingers in his ears, chanting, "Nah, Nah, I can't hear you!"

Another who runs –– runs! –– from praying mantis. One who cannot shower in an empty house.

​While there's one pal who claims to be petrified of the music produced by the barrel organ, I'm less sure it's fear. Annoyance maybe.  
One of our elders has what's known as "White Coat Anxiety." Whenever confronted with a doctor or medical professional in a clinical environment, her blood pressure goes sky-high.

I worked with a woman who couldn't stand scissors. We'll call her Peg. Another co-worker, Liz, a capricious but observant creature, had noticed that Peg invariably moved books and files so that a pair of shears on a colleague's desk would be hidden from her view
​Peg was not a particularly pleasant work comrade; she tended to hover, to micro-manage, to mouth-breathe and offer unwelcome suggestions on how better to do one's job.  

Liz, a graphic designer, took to asking Peg to hand her the scissors or the Xacto knife she needed when Peg came near her desk. In less than a week, Peg stopped hovering and micromanaging anyone in the graphics department.  

I should be ashamed to admit that I, too, began leaving a pair of shears, gaping open, on my desk in editorial to ward Peg off.  

Harnessing the power of fear.

It's what we're all doing right about now, indulging in our inner germophobia*. Which is fine, unless it's someone else pulling those strings. 
​
*Technically, it's mysophobia or verminophobia but that's just me showing off. 

​Be strong, my friends. 
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11 Comments
thank you for the fun read and diversion !
4/8/2020 02:57:48 pm

I onetime ran across a white hot summer afternoon Florida field (east of 75) to the dark shade of a cool oak hammock and got a face and scalp full of enormous banana spiders and their nets. Had to change my diapers after that one.

Reply
Amy
4/8/2020 10:08:39 pm

Thanks for swinging by -- Yeah, those oak-dwelling giants are humbling!

Reply
Sasa
4/8/2020 10:32:08 pm

Good writing sis!
Crooked fork tines, all clowns, twitching squirrels, close talkers, lizards, appliance sales people, bus rides and metal zippers are just a few more phobias that I know of the family having. And spiders. Can’t stress that one enough.

Reply
Amy
4/9/2020 09:18:01 am

Oh! This slays me! Thanks for the reminder...and it's not about the potential lethality of the threat (I mean, really, you could get pinched by a metal zipper), it's the potential occurrence. It COULD happen. And probably has...
Remember the story about the school teacher who dropped trou in front of her third-graders when a lizard darted up her pantleg?

Reply
these lists are fabulous
4/9/2020 05:53:44 pm

I like these less obvious items - doll plastic body parts, for example, as opposed to the more expected sudden ant swarms inside the house, walking barefoot in squishy mud and murky water, or cars with a Mass. plate, etc.

Reply
Clay
4/9/2020 05:50:21 pm

Dad had a thing with snakes as well. I remember one time, and one time only, that we brought a fake snake into the house. My poor friend who was actually holding the fake snake! The wrath of Riggs!

Reply
Amy
4/10/2020 10:03:12 pm

Clay -- I think all three of the kids were in the canoe with Mimi!
Thanks for stopping by!

Reply
Clay
4/11/2020 08:47:30 am

Is it wrong that I want to chuckle just imagining that event play out in my head? Tough Dad and Cool Hollis scrambling away in desperation. It just goes against my 'image' of them...in a humorous way.

George A.
4/10/2020 08:22:57 pm

Can't address the topic of phobias but I can confirm than the word Creek is also pronounced Crick in southern PA as well.

Reply
Amy
4/10/2020 10:07:50 pm

And the pronunciation of "roof" rhymes with "goof" or "tough" in them there parts?

Reply
George A.
4/11/2020 08:57:01 am

A mixed bag re: roof vs ruff. Pennsyltucky is a big state with many different accents--it all depends on who you talk to!




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